SUNDAY, DECEMBER 12, 2010 11:03 PM, EST
I have been feeling a little odd today. Part of it is likely the weather, worrying we might still lose power, and being inside all day. I'm not planning on going in to work tomorrow, regardless of whether we're closed (which we rarely are). ... but most of it is, I have been thinking a lot about Mr. David (I mean, I think about him pretty much constantly, especially when I'm home, but today was a lot of thinking about his medical situation). I once again reviewed the NICU pictures from when he was very sick with an infection (I'm not really a glutton for punishment; we just finally found our camera after about 2 months of it being missing, and I was reviewing all the shots), and thought a lot about his heart surgery.
Matt told me about this passage from Exodus awhile back, in terms of David's surgery. This is sort of a creative application of it, I guess, but that's what I've been thinking about today:
(Exodus, chapter 19, this is what was leading up to Moses receiving the 10 commandments):
(8) The people all answered as one: "Everything that the Lord has spoken we will do." Moses reported the words of the people to the Lord. Then the Lord said to Moses, "I am going to come to you in a dense cloud, in order that the people may hear when I speak with you and trust you ever after." ... (16) On the morning of the third day there was thunder and lightning, as well as a thick cloud on the mountain, and a blast of a trumpet so loud that all the people who were in the camp trembled. Moses brought the people out of the camp to meet God. They took their stand at the foot of the mountain ... (19) As the blast of the trumpet grew louder and louder, Moses would speak and God would answer him in thunder. When the Lord descended upon Mount Sinai, to the top of the mountain, the Lord summoned Moses, to the top of the mountain, and Moses went up ... the Lord said to him, "Go down, and come up bringing Aaron with you ... So Moses went down to the people and told them."
So the bulk of the passage is about the limits God sets for the people, even before the commandments are given. Matt said what he thought about was the image of Moses on the mountain, alone with God. In terms of the surgery, Matt said he liked to think of David Moses and God being together, alone on the mountain. When he initially said that, I thought about the operating room, and I envisioned everything being very quiet, and there being this bright white light surrounding David and the surgeon, Dr. Kirshbom. ... We chose not to ask too many questions about the details of the procedure – as I've said before, I read about 20 seconds about how the heart-lung bypass machine works and decided I didn't need to know any more. ... So what I was thinking about was not so much God guiding Dr. Kirshbom's hand or anything like that, but that it was the three of them up there on the mountain: David Moses, Dr. Kirshbom, and God. And it was quiet and peaceful, so that the doctor could do what God wanted him to do, so that David Moses could come back down to us and tell us what we need to know ... And they were wrapped in this strong, protective light, because our David Moses still has a lot of work to do for us, lots of things to show us.
..... .... (this is the symbol of "Joanna's thinking and trying to be deliberate")....
I may not have done a (quite) adequate job of describing the feeling this image gave me, since it's hard to sort it out, even to myself.
.... .....
In the essay I wrote shortly before the surgery, I explained that before David's delivery I was thinking about the passage in Exodus that talks about Moses' birth and how he was named: Verse 10 says: She named him Moses, “because, she said, I drew him out of the water (mashah).” In my head I added, "I drew him out of the water and he was safe."
The night before David's surgery was one I will never forget. We had to give him a bath in Betadine (sp?), and we didn't really worry too much about it during the day and evening. We were at a friend's house and my sister was there and everything was pretty light-hearted. Matt and I got everything ready for the bath and plopped little David Moses into the tub. I picked up the washcloth and then I froze. For the first time, I considered that this might be the last bath we give him. I looked up at Matt and he was crying, too. I'm not sure I can explain that feeling - to look at your child and think those thoughts. So, draw him out of the water, yes, and keep him safe, amen. As we bathed him, both of us in tears, I kept thinking this was nice, that if it were to be his last bath, at least Matt and I are doing it for him. It just seemed like the right thing for his parents to do. ... ...
(This is a picture of David, after that bath)
The other image the passage evokes for me is one of an irresistible pulling, "the Lord summoned Moses, and Moses went up." In the initial essay I talked about traveling to Atlanta and toward the red line outside the operating room ... the boundary that God set around the mountain - after that point, it's just the three of them and we had to wait at the foot of the mountain, and trust God that it would be okay.
Part 2
MONDAY, DECEMBER 13, 2010 8:19 AM, EST
(Photo: David getting an echocardiogram, the day before surgery)
This is a follow-up to last night’s entry, and you may want to read that one first. It’ll make more sense that way.
I often ask Matt to preview my Caring Bridge entries before I post them, to make sure they make sense the way I think they make sense, to otherwise proofread, and especially on the more, uh, theological ones, to make sure I’m not too far off track. I talked to Matt as I was writing the entry from last night/this morning, but I didn’t have him read it until after it was posted. He had these additional thoughts:
(1) On the subject of the boundaries God sets for us, as related to the red line: he wonders about the significance of there, effectively, not being a red line for us, since the anesthesiologist just took him away from the prep room. So certainly for us, and perhaps in general, there might not be as definite a starting/ending point as you might think, when events are beyond our control and it is not up to us.
(2) He’s not sure that it was Dr. Kirshbom up on the mountain there, most intimately with David Moses and God during the surgery. He thinks it was probably us. Which is lovely, but see #4 below.
(3) In the Exodus passage, there is a LOT of preparation for Moses to go up to the mountaintop, lots of pre-directions from God about telling the people to wash their clothes and other steps to take. God also gives Moses a lot of information about what is getting ready to happen. For me that equaled all the preparation and worrying we did ahead of time, and all the information we received. And, related to #1, as far as not being in control, all that information did not (and I suppose could not have) prepare us for what actually happened.
(4) Another thought, as far as things not being the way you think they’ll be: the wait for us, during the heart surgery, was not nearly as painful as we predicted. I mean, I guess that’s okay, but I did feel it should have been more … awful, and it wasn’t. Our pastor, Randy, was there, and we had a prayer right after we talked with Dr. Kirshbom, I think. Matt and my sister worked for awhile on breakfast, and later on lunch, and I was sending e-mails and updates. Then my sister and I went down to the coffee shop and then sat outside in this little garden, talking for awhile. We were waiting, but it didn’t feel as bad as I thought it would.
The surgery didn’t take nearly as long as the doctor had predicted, by about an hour and a half. I saw Dr. Kirshbom coming towards us in the waiting room, and before I could quite register, “oh, it’s too early something must have happened,” I thought instead, “it’s okay. He is not getting ready to give us bad news.” It was a fairly strong intuition, based mostly on the way he was walking. Not precisely a stroll, but not looking like someone who was getting ready to tell a family their son didn’t make it. And not that I’d had much time to study the way he normally walks, but whatever. And then when he pulled out a chair to sit down to talk to us, he didn’t, like, turn the chair around and straddle it like a teenage boy would, but it was also quite casual and I thought again, this is not the demeanor of someone getting ready to give us bad news. The report of the surgery was brief, “yeah, I fixed his heart. I’m worried about his lungs.” I wasn’t even sure what to ask, because I just thought he would say more. All I managed was, “The valves and everything?” since that was anticipated to be the more difficult part, and he said yes, the valves and everything … then we tried to have another prayer, but before we could get started my Aunt Judy called my sister, when we had told her we would call her once there was something to say, so we were back to life as usual. Sigh …
